The Obama administration will soon issue sweeping new environmental safety rules for hydraulic fracturing on federal land, setting a new standard that natural gas wells on all lands eventually could follow.

The rules, which are likely to be unveiled by the Interior Department within days, are designed to address concerns that the method of extracting natural gas known as “fracking” can contaminate groundwater. Among other things, they create new guidelines for constructing wells and treating waste water, according to a draft of the proposed rules reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

At the same time, the department loosened a proposed requirement for companies to disclose the chemicals they use to extract natural gas from the earth, after the industry complained an earlier version would slow drilling too much.

The change, which disappointed environmentalists, is a fresh sign that the administration is heeding industry concerns after Republican complaints of over-regulation.

Last month, the Environmental Protection Agency gave the industry two years to comply with new air quality standards for oil and natural gas wells after the industry complained it would be difficult to meet new standards. Initially, the department wanted energy companies to specify in advance which chemicals they put into fracking fluids.

Under the draft rules, they would instead have to identify the chemicals after they have already put them into the ground. In the weeks leading up to the proposal of the rules, several oil and natural gas companies, including Exxon Mobil and Apache Corp. met with top White House officials to weigh in on possible changes.

Apache declined to comment. ExxonMobil declined to comment.

The Natural Resources Defense Council praised the administration for reducing the potential for contamination under the new rules but said it was disappointed the department had loosened the chemical disclosure requirement.

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One presumes they don’t really want America to fail but I can’t understand why they don’t see the consequences of their actions.

Bob in VA

Make no mistake. This is the opening salvo by the Obama administration, the EPA, and all of the eco-whacko movements to kill natural gas extraction. Regulations regarding fluids used will keep environmental law suits sprouting forever.

Oxycon

“All the above!”

Indiana

Obama must think he’s already won the fight. He doesn’t even try to mask his real intentions any longer.

bigL

kids and lefties pleased. Oil is a boogey man. boomers happy in a cognitive dissonance way….
Why? because it sticks a thumb in the eye of the establishment….the boomers’ parents so to speak.
It is always the boomer parents.
But without oil boomers, cars grind to a halt, no travel in yr retirement, no meds, you stupid dopes.
“this is your brain….thisis your brane on drugs…”

SeniorD

Here’s a conundrum to puzzle out:

1. The Government is “by the people for the people” which suggests all government holdings, employees, partisan hacks and property belongs to “We the people”.
2. If the govenment’s Bosses (us’ins) want to frack on our property, who is tell us no?
3. Where did this watermelon abomination get the idea it can rule with impunity and without consequences?

pagar

All private jobs must be destroyed by the Obama regime in order to turn this country into the 3rd world hellhole the Democrats demand.

StrangernFiction

I can’t understand why they don’t see the consequences of their actions.

IF they don’t see the consequences of their actions, it is because they don’t care about the consequences. THE WANT MORE POWER.

The three cases brought by the EPA/DOE/DOI, etc. to prove fracking caused ground water contamination all proved false, but that doesn’t stop the eco-terrorists running those agencies from pressing on.

Finncrisp

To say that frakking causes earthquakes is the same as quarry blasting causes earthquakes. Neither is true. When this dope is gone, we will have much to unwind. Right after Deathcare is repealed, the resignation of every employee at the EPA is next. Utter house clean of that mob of Reds. MAY DAY!!

Mark1957

It’s a good thing that we have ALGAE to fall back on….sigh.

The only good thing about bypassing congress is the next president call undo the damage with the stroke of a pen.

Alvin

Be weary about this. I have been reading about fracking in PA and WV and they seems to have the situation well under control. This additional layer is not needed, just more federal overreach.

Because the answer to the problems that plague us is even more regulation…

randyinrocklin

without coal, natural gas and oil, there would be no electricity to plug those “green cars” in to recharge their batteries. this only increases costs of electricity for the rest of the people. with increased energy costs, everything we consume is impacted by higher prices. what a mess.

“Lithium is widely distributed on Earth and is the 33rd most abundant element;however, it does not naturally occur in elemental form due to its high reactivity. Estimates for crustal content range from 20 to 70 ppm by weight. In keeping with its name, lithium forms a minor part of igneous rocks, with the largest concentrations in granites. Granitic pegmatites also provide the greatest abundance of lithium-containing minerals, with spodumene and petalite being the most commercially-viable mineral sources for the element.

Lithium metal, due to its alkaline tarnish, is corrosive and requires special handling to avoid skin contact. Breathing lithium dust or lithium compounds (which are often alkaline) can irritate the nose and throat; higher exposure to lithium can cause a build-up of fluid in the lungs, leading to pulmonary edema. The metal itself is usually a handling hazard because of the caustic hydroxide produced when it is in contact with moisture causing an explosion. Lithium should be stored in a non-reactive compound such as naphtha or a hydrocarbon

Most lithium comes from South America, where the cheapest extraction method evaporates salty brine in ponds lined with toxic PVC, Erceg said. And in lithium-rich regions of Chile, mining the material uses two-thirds of the area’s drinking water.

Erceg described another exploratory method–of piping in ocean water to mine minerals–as inefficient because it requires treating the saline water first.”

IS OBAMA ON PUTIN’S PAYROLL?
Written by Dr. Jack Wheeler
Thursday, 26 April 2012

“The campaign to stop shale gas proving its case in the market is political, not scientific. Behind it lies vested interests. The Russian gas industry, which is alarmed at losing its impending near-monopoly on European gas supplies, has been vocal in its criticism of shale gas.”

This is Matt Ridley’s observation yesterday (4/25) in Can We Get Over Fear of Fracking Now? He’s a brilliant science writer who fully understands the fraudulent arguments against fracking. Last year, he won the Hayek Prize, awarded for upholding “Friedrich Hayek’s vision of economic and individual liberty.” (He is also now a British Lord – upon the passing of his father last month, he became the 5th Viscount Ridley.)

Science is Ridley’s forte, however, not the geopolitical underworld. The “Russian gas industry” has been vastly more than simply “vocal in its criticism.” It is run by Putin’s mafia, and operates as do all mafias: through threats, extortion, and bribery. Their focus is primarily upon journalists and politicians.

Just like the Saudis, the KGB has journalists all over the world on their payroll. There’s hardly a major newspaper or newsmagazine in Europe, for example, that doesn’t have one or more of their prominent writers and editors being paid on the sly by the Saudis to say nice things about them and nothing critical.

It’s not quite as extensive throughout the US media, but you’d be surprised what US pundits and media stars are on the Saudi take. The Saudis particularly like to see if they can rope in one of them on the right. Well-known conservative columnist and television commentator Robert Novak (1931-2009) was one of their prize catches. For years they paid him a fortune to be pro-Palestinian/anti-Israel.

The KGB – since 1991, it was supposedly renamed and divided up into the FSB (Federal Security Service internal to Russia) and the SVR (Foreign Intelligence Service), but it’s still the same outfit of Russian thugs – does the same, and a lot more. Putin has tasked it with demonizing natural gas fracking with life-or-death importance.

The “Russian gas industry” is one company, Gazprom, the largest single producer of gas on earth (17% of worldwide production). It is Putin’s principal cash cow, with revenues well in excess of $100 billion – billion – a year over which he has personal control. Much of Europe, especially Germany and Eastern Europe, would freeze in the winter without Russian gas, for which Gazprom charges extortionate prices.

60% of Gazprom’s 550 billion cubic meters of yearly gas production is sold domestically at a huge loss to keep Russians from freezing and rioting due to too-high prices. It costs $132 to produce and distribute 1 tcm (thousand cubic meters), yet Russians pay on average only $80. At a loss of $52 per tcm, this puts Gazprom in a $17 billion hole. It makes it up by charging monopolistic extortionate prices to Europe, averaging $415 per tcm.

Thanks to shale gas fracking, US natural gas prices (at the Louisiana Henry Hub) are now under $70 per tcm. Thanks to shale gas fracking, the US has overtaken Russia and is now the largest gas producing country in the world, with over 600 billion cubic meters last year. So it’s easy to see how Putin’s cash cow will go belly-up if Europeans are free to frack their gas reserves.

Fracking technology can liberate countries like Poland and Bulgaria from Russian extortion. Since it also dooms the “renewable energy” industry with its wind and solar scams, as well as the dream of the eco-wackos to deindustrialize Western Civilization, the KGB happily shovels money into enviro groups producing studies “proving” fracking will kill us all, then organizing street protests with useful idiots whipped into hysteria.

Heavily bribed politicians then propose legislation to ban fracking, pointing to the street demos and the local media frenzy created by bribed journalists citing the phony studies.

This worked like a charm in Bulgaria last January, when its KGB-bribed parliament banned fracking. Bulgaria has conservatively 500 billion cubic meters of shale gas which fracking could extract, and consumes only four billion a year: fracking could liberate Bulgaria from Russian gas for over 100 years.

The good news here is that the ban is so obviously masochistic that sanity is making itself heard – and Bulgarians realize they can make a lot more money via fracking prosperity than bribes from the Kremlin. Thus the ban may soon be lifted.

The shale gas reserves in Poland dwarf those of Bulgaria – in excess of five trillion cubic meters -enough to keep Poles toasty warm for centuries while screwing Russia by selling gas across Europe at prices Gazprom can’t match. That’s a Dream Twofer for Poland.

Polish hatred for Russia makes their pols more impermeable to KGB bribery. So Putin sent his folks to Brussels to bribe the Eurocrats into passing anti-shale gas restrictive rules and regulations. The Polish government subsequently announced that it would refuse to obey them if passed.

So Putin, in tandem with the EU enviro lobbies, have currently settled for delaying tactics, bribing the EU parliamentarians into approving rules designed to slow down the approval process, such as requiring complex “environmental impact studies” before fracking commences. Sound familiar?

Earlier this month (4/13), Zero issued an Executive Order to regulate fracking. Zero’s Interior Secretary, Ken Salazar, has done everything bureaucratically possible to stymie increased oil production, but hasn’t had the regulatory firepower to do the same with fracking. This EO may provide what he needs.

Salazar is so anti-oil and anti-US energy independence that this week (4/24), he speculated that gasoline could go to $9 a gallon as it is now in Greece, and there was nothing he could do about it.

Today (4/26), Zero’s head of the EPA, Lisa Jackson, issued the first EPA rules for fracking – of which you can be confident there will be many more.

We know this because the day before (4/25), one of EPA’s punk fascists was revealed to say his agency’s policy was to “crucify” oil and gas companies like the Romans did to villagers, making them obedient to EPA edicts and “easy to manage.”

As noted by Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-OK) who broke the story, soon after the punk announced this (in 2010), the EPA began targeting gas producers in Pennsylvania, Texas, and Wyoming. The punk, Al Armendariz, promptly issued an apology, but Inhofe wasn’t buying it. The EPA’s threats to crucify American oil & gas companies are “all a part of Obama’s war on domestic energy,” he told Fox News.

Jim Inhofe put his finger right on it, warning on national television that Zero is conducting a war on our country’s energy production and energy independence. So you might ask, is he being paid to do so, by Putin or others equally nefarious?

Certainly, many in the US media are, and many within the US government. But Zero himself?

There is a remarkable 4 minute-39 second video issued on “Earth Day” (April 22, Lenin’s birthday) last Sunday denouncing the environmental agenda as an “economic suicide pact.” It is entitled “If I Wanted America To Fail” —

Please watch it first before I continue – for I’m going say how it ends.

After, with excruciating poignancy, describing all that Zero is doing to ensure the failure of our blessed nation, the narrator concludes with the last thing he would do “if I wanted America to fail… I wouldn’t change a thing.”

The answer to our question, is Zero on Putin’s payroll?, is: given his behavior, given his actions as president, it makes no difference whether he is or is not. He could be a full-blown Manchurian Candidate. He could be bought and paid for by the KGB. He could be a brain-damaged black racist moonbat consumed with hatred for America. He could be a megalomaniacal narcissistic sociopath.

It doesn’t matter if he actually is any or all of these. What matters is that his actions are such that he could be-for those actions are what he would do if he were. So we need not make accusations for which we do not have solid proof. It suffices to know that, whatever the cause, whatever his motivation, this man means us and our country mortal harm. And he has the capacity, as President of the United States, to do so. His every day in the Oval Office is dedicated to doing so.

What matters is: Nobama 2012. Our country’s life depends on it.

aprilnovember811

He needs to be removed. He’s a foreigner committing economic terrorism.

Here is a description of the ACTUAL hydraulic fracturing process which is HEAVILY dependent on the type of rock to be fractured and the depth of the horizontal portion of the bore hole. Therefore what works in Texas’ shale formation may not work in Pa, Wy or Oh.

“As pressure builds up in this portion of the well, water opens fractures, and the driving pressure extends the fractures deep into the rock unit. When pumping stops these fractures quickly snap closed and the water used to open them is pushed back into the borehole, back up the well and is collected at the surface.”
THIS is how the water table can be affected. Shattering rock hundreds of feet below the surface provides no REAL sense of control. How do you know that by shattering that rock formation you have not opened cracks that lead to the water table thereby allowing natgas or methane (and fracking chemicals) into the water table?

TEXAS201… I call BS on your “Oh and one more thing you should all consider in this weak economy the lowest unemployment rates are in right to work states with energy production.” http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/38838429/ns/business-us_business/t/states-ridiculously-low-unemployment/#.T6QazDdn3GA
Just because Rush, Hannity, Orielly, Coulter etc. says something you, as a rational human being, should corroborate the information and not take these fascists at their word. I do the same with ALL news I hear and it helps me come to better and more thought out conclusions.

Militant Conservative

Not to worry, he’s almost done. Right now your seeing Obama grasping at anything
To win re election. Obama is
Going the way of the dodo.
The NOTUS has worn out his
Welcome. he was never qualified to hold the office and will leave as a petulant child.
Satan hates to lose.

Powder is dry

tommy mc donnell

no oil
no coal
no gas
no electricity
no nuclear
no economy

Limousine Barry

Let me be clear, I can raise natural gas prices just the way I raised gas prices. Although I suck this will prove that America sucks… and I need four more years. Good day.

Wake up there all in each others pockets sipping wine living the high life it dont matter who we elect they have a plan and there going to succeed cause to many people believe in the system they developed. Either way there taking our freedom in reality they already have it.